The Baby Connection. Dawn Atkins

not.” She went bright red, as if that embarrassed her.

      “Emma is Paul Stockton’s daughter,” he said. “I’m staying in their guesthouse and this place was on my way to work.”

      “I didn’t realize we had Paul’s daughter with us. I don’t know all the kids. Bright Blossoms is my mother’s business. So where do you work?” She glanced over at the little boy, who had left the block and was crawling across the room.

      “ASU. I write for the alumni magazine right now. It’s a paycheck while I’m getting my grandmother into assisted living and clearing out her house. What about you? Did you go part-time with Arizona News Day?”

      “I had to quit. Life got in the way.” She seemed to think that choice would make sense to him. Hardly. News photography had been her life. She turned to the kid, who had pushed himself upright and now teetered toward her like someone new to stilts.

      She crouched down and held out her arms. “That’s the way… You can make it.” The kid made an excited sound and sped up, leaning perilously forward. Right before he took a header, Mel caught him. “Good boy!” she said, taking him into her arms, then standing to face Noah, almost as if showing him off.

      “You’re still taking pictures at least,” he said, nodding at the wall shots.

      “Mom had the space. I help her out here, too.”

      “Oh. Sure.” She’d quit the paper to help her mother. What a shame, with her talent and ambition.

      “This is Daniel,” she said, very pink in the face all of a sudden.

      “Cute kid,” he said. He had curly brown hair and a big smile that showed a couple of tiny teeth, but his face was streaked with green paint, as were his clothes and hands. “You’d think his mother would clean him up for a portrait.”

      She looked startled. Then something seemed to dawn on her and she took a deep breath before speaking. “That would be me. I’m his mother.”

      “Oh. God. I didn’t realize. Congratulations,” he said, recovering from his shock. So that was what had gone wrong. She’d gotten pregnant, had a kid and quit her job. Her left hand, which braced the boy on her hip, had a bare ring finger, so she hadn’t married the guy.

      As these thoughts raced through his head, Mel studied him, looking nervous and embarrassed. Why? It was hardly his place to judge her.

      Finally she spoke. “When I got your text, I assumed you’d gotten mine.”

      “Your text?” He flashed on the moment when, jumble-headed, barely past a panic attack, he’d deleted everything on his phone. “I wasn’t up to much at the hospital.”

      “I should have verified, I guess….” She cleared her throat, looked away, then back. “See, the thing is—” She blew out a breath. “Okay, I’ll just say it. I got pregnant that weekend.”

      “You what?” His brain glitched, shorting out his thoughts like so many bad fuses. “You got…? But you told me—”

      “That I had birth control handled, yeah. I thought I did. It’s a long story. I was between methods, but I wasn’t supposed to be able to get pregnant in the first place. I’m not a careless person and I felt really stupid about it, so…” She paused. “Forget all that. The point is…Daniel is your son.”

      “My…son?” He felt as though someone had shoved him hard. He took a step back to stay upright. He looked at the kid in Mel’s arms with the same round curls he had, its color halfway between Mel’s black and his brown. The kid even had his dimple, he realized with a jolt.

      As if on cue, the little boy reached out his arms, straining for Noah.

      “You can hold him,” Mel said, as if to reassure him.

      Noah accepted the kid—small, but dense, a solid weight on his good arm. The little boy patted Noah’s cheeks. “Da-da,” he said. “Da-da.”

      Noah’s jaw sagged. “He knows?”

      Mel burst out laughing. “D is one of the first sounds babies make,” she said. “He calls everything da-da—me, the dog, my mother. Cheerios even.” Daniel leaned toward his mother, so Noah handed him back.

      “Oh, okay. Good.” Did he mean good? Good that Daniel didn’t know Noah was his father? That sounded bad. Damn. He was in deep weeds here.

      “You must have thought I was an asshole ignoring you like that.”

      “But you didn’t. You wished me well and said I’d do great.”

      “I meant with your job, Mel, not…that. Christ, you were having a baby. That I…uh…caused.” He cleared his throat. “I should have been there.” He seemed to be walking on ground that could disappear beneath his feet.

      “No. That’s the point. I didn’t consult you about what you wanted. I didn’t need you.” She hesitated. “I mean, I didn’t want you to feel obligated. I knew you never wanted kids. And I took full responsibility on my own.”

      “Okay. I get it. I just… Hell.” He was stranded in a weird limbo. He always knew what to do. Here, he was stumped. “So, how old is he?”

      “Almost a year. His birthday’s the twenty-fifth. He’s small for his age—he came a little early—but he’s very healthy.”